


Intertwined

by pocketmumbles (livelikejack)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Discussion of Death, Established Relationship, Everyone Is Alive, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Knitting, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-06 09:52:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5412359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livelikejack/pseuds/pocketmumbles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometime in December, Scott begins knitting gifts for the pack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Intertwined

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: _winter advent prompt ask?? scoyd?? and SCARVES??? or knitting. or just crafts. or anything with scott and boyd being happy and cuddly <3_
> 
> ...This ended up being maybe 10% happy/cuddly, and 90% angsty nonsense. There are vague references to Greek mythology, but it's really just a bunch of nonsense. Originally posted on [Tumblr](http://pocketlass.tumblr.com/post/134694440886/december-drabble-advent-calendar-day-6) and partially inspired by [this photoset](http://erikiras.tumblr.com/post/123364316915/can-you-pull-down-the-dawn-its-been-so-dark) and its accompanying [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub2zSqCyf7c).
> 
> Boyd-centric, set in a canon-divergent future where Scott somehow brought Boyd, Erica, and Allison back to life.

Sometime in December, Scott begins knitting gifts for the pack.

“I didn’t know you could knit,” Boyd says.

Scott shrugs. “I can’t. Or, well…” He looks up from the yarn in his hands, smiling a little. “My abuela always made me help her knit when we visited, taught me a little here and there. I think I made one-eighth of a scarf once.”

Boyd nods, looking over at the veritable mountain of yarn on the loveseat in the McCall living room. He’s a little sad that Scott piled everything there. The couch is comfy and can fit more people, but the loveseat is the perfect size to squash onto with Scott.

He’s also a little perplexed at the skein of yarn that Scott leaves draped over Boyd’s hands while he winds it into a ball. Boyd doesn’t really see how he’s being any help to Scott, but there is something relaxing about watching the yarn trail from his hands to Scott’s, a thin red line stretched taut with no visible end on either side. “When did you get all of this?” he asks.

“Driving with Derek the other day,” Scott says absently as he winds the last of the yarn. He sets it aside and drapes a new skein over Boyd’s hands, bright red like a summer campfire. “Passed by a yarn store, and I just…” He shrugs. “Wanted to knit.”

Boyd nods again. He doesn’t ask how or why Scott ended up with so _much_ yarn. He went grocery shopping with Derek once, and ended up with fifty extra dollars’ worth of hummus and cookies. And that was _after_ he talked Derek into putting half of the shopping cart back. He’s been sneaking tubs into the McCalls’ fridge whenever he can. Isaac seems to like the garlic hummus the most, and Melissa seems fond of the shortbread cookies. (No one seems to like the meringues. Hayden had been so disgusted by them that she spent an entire week badgering Erica into making better ones from scratch.) “What are you thinking of making?”

“Just simple things, I guess,” Scott says. “Scarves, hats, maybe some socks. Everyone loves socks.” He sets aside the looped yarn and picks up a skein of deep red. “It’s almost Christmas, so I figured I could…for this year…”

Scott always gets a little sentimental around Christmas. It’s the one time of the year that they know they’ll all be together, everyone clearing their schedules and planning flights and carpools back to Beacon Hills. Scott is always busy the entire week, splitting his days between group outings and private time with everyone in the pack – and, of course, giving out deeply personal presents. Boyd isn’t sure why Scott has decided to go extra personal this year and make everyone’s gifts from scratch, though. Maybe there’s something significant about most of them making it to twenty this year. Two decades of life. Ten fingers, ten toes.

Technically, Boyd is also one of the “most of them”s who made it to twenty. It says so on his driver’s license and legal documents, and so this year’s birthday was his twentieth. He even looks twenty, or close enough to it, anyway. It feels a little odd, though, when he was…not around…for his seventeenth and eighteenth.

Erica had an honorary eighteenth birthday party this year, and Braeden and Derek bought Allison her first legal drink for her twenty-first. Isaac always sticks a single silly singing candle on Boyd’s cake, ever since the first year when no one knew how many candles to count out. It’s…odd. The three of them don’t really talk to each other about bridging the gap between both ends of their lives, but they crowd a little closer on their birthdays, stick a little closer to Scott. Boyd wonders how Aiden manages. He hasn’t seen either twin since they left town together, no longer exactly identical.

(If he’s being honest with himself, Boyd forgives them. If he’s being completely honest, though, that still doesn’t mean that he ever wants to see them again.)

“Boyd?”

Scott watches him, eyes wide and worried, and Boyd realizes that he hadn’t really noticed when Scott stopped talking. He takes Scott’s hand, running his thumb steadily over the back of his knuckles. “I think that’s a great idea.”

Scott smiles, brighter and a little more sure of himself. “Yeah?”

He smiles and leans in for a kiss. “Yeah.”

 

* * *

 

The thing is, Boyd doesn’t remember dying.

Oh, he remembers everything leading _up_ to dying, of course. He remembers the electrical shocks running through his body, the searing pain and biting irony of falling from his own design. He remembers wanting to laugh in those scant seconds before he hit the ground. He remembers the stabbing of claws through flesh, he remembers the metallic stench of his own blood and the swooping sensation of it draining out of him. And of course, above all, he remembers the pain.

What he doesn’t remember is the end.

He remembers coming back to life much more vividly, his eyes flying open and so much air filling his lungs that he was sure they would burst. He remembers cool air on his skin, all of his senses so flooded and numb. And of course, above all, he remembers the pain.

Some people say that dying is like falling asleep, and Boyd supposes that they might be right. He can never pinpoint the moment that he falls asleep, but he always knows the moment he wakes up. Maybe it’s like that with dying. Or maybe it’s only like that when your death turns out to not be so permanent.

He doesn’t ask Scott about it, even though he wants to. He’s heard the full story from Mason, a little bit of it from Liam, and…it’s not the same as what happened to him. Derek had been Boyd’s alpha. Liam had been Scott’s beta. Boyd had known that Kali and Ethan and Aiden were the enemy come to kill them. Scott hadn’t known that Theo was planning his murder until it was too late. What happened to Scott is almost the complete opposite of what happened to Boyd. But, somehow, that makes it all the more familiar to him.

He knows that Scott doesn’t see it that way. Scott barely acknowledges that he died, as if fifteen minutes compared to two years somehow renders his own inconsequential. (He’d barely acknowledged it when it first happened, either, according to Kira. Healing from his wounds had been the important part, apparently, and coming to terms with his own death had apparently seemed…superfluous.) Boyd doesn’t believe that, not for a moment, but he understands why Scott feels that way. He’d felt plenty of survivor’s guilt in the months after Erica was murdered – he still feels it now, even though he sees her every day.

He hopes that Scott will talk to him about it one day. Dying at another’s hands is no small thing, and Boyd has had many stilted conversations with Erica and Allison to try to make sense of it all. Not to understand how they died – Boyd is the only one of them with enough witnesses to glean a full story, and he has no intentions of asking – but to understand how to move past it. And Boyd knows that Scott needs it, too, even if Scott thinks that he doesn’t.

“You’re really flying through this one,” he says.

Scott blinks, knitting needles slowing to a stop. He looks down at the nearly finished scarf in front of him, then slowly lifts his eyes to Boyd, as if waking from a trance. “I guess I just…hit a groove,” he says, shrugging a little. “Y’know? When you’re doing the same thing over and over and your mind can just kind of…shut off for a while.”

“Yeah,” Boyd says, nodding easily. “I get that.” Scott resumes knitting, albeit slower, and the ball of yarn bumps around Boyd’s clasped hands as it unwinds. There’s something indescribably calming about it, trapping a small tug of chaos within his fingers and letting a single strand slip free. There’s something transfixing about watching the lone string of yarn slide away from him, constantly pulling like an unending tether.

Boyd doesn’t remember dying, and he still isn’t quite sure if it’s like falling asleep. He thinks it might be, though, as he watches the yarn unravel in his hands and knit into something whole under Scott’s unerring needles. Boyd doesn’t remember dying, and he doesn’t think that he ever really will.

But he remembers dreaming.

 

Allison is the first to get her present from Scott, on the night of the winter solstice. There’s something significant about that, probably, the darkest time on the longest night of the year, but Boyd doesn’t bother to think too much into it. He’s a little preoccupied with a dream he’s been having lately – he can never remember what it is, forgets it the moment that he wakes, but he knows that he’s had it before. There’s something familiar about it, even though he can’t recall any of it at all.

“Scott’s been knitting lately,” Allison says. “Says he’s making things for everyone.”

Erica nods. “He told me he wants to give me mine tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Boyd says. They skate across the empty ice rink together, the tracks from their blades curving and crossing into unintelligible tangles. “Guess he’s going for a personal touch this year.”

Allison holds her hands out in front of her. They’re wrapped in soft yarn knit all the way up her forearms, deep red like deoxygenated blood. “I had a dream last night,” she begins. Her arms drop, tuck together behind her back and out of sight. “It was…weird.”

“How?” Erica asks.

“I don’t know,” Allison says. “I can barely remember it, actually. But I knew…it felt…”

“Familiar,” Boyd finishes, almost without thinking. Allison’s eyes widen, and she nods quickly. “Like you’ve been there before.”

Erica raises one leg behind her, hands wobbling for balance before she sails around them in a broad arc. “Like you were meant to be there.”

Boyd nods. “I get them, too,” he says. “Sometimes.”

They skate in silence, lapping the rink once, then twice. “Do you think Scott gets them?” Erica asks.

They step off the rink and onto the bleachers. Allison sits next to him on the bleachers, and Erica brushes ice from their skates while Boyd laces up his shoes. Finally, he says, “I didn’t know he could knit.”

Allison traces the chevrons along her armwarmers. “There’s no such thing as fate,” she says, almost defiantly. “What happens to us – we get to choose it for ourselves.”

Erica doesn’t answer, so engrossed hanging up their skates that Boyd would think she hadn’t heard Allison if he didn’t know better.

She’s right, Boyd supposes, but at the same time, she’s terribly wrong. He didn’t want to die, certainly not, but…what had happened had been his plan. It had backfired horribly, of course, but…he chose what was going to happen that night. They all did, in their own way.

They didn’t get to choose to live, though. Boyd is happy to be alive, of course, ecstatic and taking advantage of every opportunity. If he’d been given the choice, he certainly would’ve chosen to come back to life…but that wasn’t what happened. Someone else had made the choice to bring him to life again, to pull him backwards through the pain and peace and inevitable end. He looks at Allison’s red-wrapped hands clasped neatly in her lap. One end, and another, and no amount of pressing them close could ever rejoin the pieces. “No such thing as fate,” he agrees, and Allison smiles.

It doesn’t matter, after all. Maybe fate is real, and maybe it isn’t. It doesn’t matter, though, because Boyd isn’t so sure that it’s meant for them. Not anymore.

 

* * *

 

In this dream, his name isn’t quite Boyd, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is the dirt between his toes and the sea of grass spread out before him as far as the eye can see. What matters is that he is alone, again.

In this dream, he follows a flower that gleams bright like fangs amongst the grass. He plucks it from the ground, and the ground opens up beneath him, and he follows the flower down into the cold.

In this dream, he meets his death. The king of the dead gazes at him with eyes like ice and a crown of claws, and he makes Boyd an offer. He offers life for death, and death for life, and power beyond power, and above all he offers Boyd a kingdom to call his own. In this dream, Boyd remembers the lonely grass and the dirt clinging to his bones, and in this dream, he hesitates.

In this dream, he meets his fate. The thread-spinner weaves with nimble hands, plucking up a single strand and knitting it into a piece with so much purpose. Boyd watches and waits for the thread-spinner to meet his gaze, watches until he sees his own life play out in the thread-spinner’s hands, and waits until the threads cut deep into the spinner’s skin and blood spills across the tapestry.

In this dream, the thread-spinner turns to him with eyes like fire and says, “Don’t.”

In this dream, Boyd opens his hands to glistening red palms. A single drop falls onto the tapestry and blots out the rest of his story, and he knows that he has chosen his fate.

In this dream, he dies and lives and dies again. The king is with him every time he dies, bowing before him with his crown of claws. And the thread-spinner is with him every time he lives, nimble hands weaving together his tattered thread until he bleeds.

In this dream, he meets his death in ice that burns like fire and meets his fate in fire as bright as the sun. The dirt clings to his bones, cold as ice and warmed by the sun, and he accepts his death to choose his fate. In this dream, he falls asleep to eyes that burn like ice and he wakes to eyes that shine like fire.

When he wakes, his hands are red.

 

* * *

Kira is probably the nicest person that Boyd has ever met. There is a quiet gentleness to her, a deep trust in others that would make Boyd worry if he hadn’t seen Kira put her foot down before. She is understanding, even accommodating, but she isn’t a pushover. They’ve always understood each other, even after she broke up with Scott, even after he started dating him. There are many reasons that Boyd is grateful for his second chance at life, and getting to meet Kira is definitely one of them.

(Sometimes he wonders how they might have met if things had gone a little differently. If Boyd had never accepted the bite, if the Yukimuras had moved to Beacon Hills for nothing more than a job opening at the high school. He thinks they would have been friends anyway, would have sat together at their lonely lunch table.

He thinks Scott would have sat with them, too, if things had gone a little differently for him.)

“Have you ever heard the story of the red string of fate?” she asks him. She holds his hand carefully, tongue poking out in concentration as she carefully applies red polish to his fingernails. The scarf that Scott had given her earlier slips free from her shoulder, and she loops it around her neck before leaning over his hand again. “Well, it’s not really a story, I guess, more of a…myth.”

He nods. “Lovers are connected by a red string of fate, right? Tied to their finger or something?”

“Soulmates,” Kira says, nodding. “String trailing all around the world, to wherever their true love was.” She inspects his hand carefully, then caps the nail polish with a nod. “I don’t know why I thought about it; just reminded me a little when I saw all that yarn at Scott’s house. It’s a lot of red.”

It is. It unnerves him, sometimes, red yarn trailing over Scott’s arm like an open wound, pooling in his hands like – Boyd shakes the thoughts from his head. Red can mean so many things, after all. The red of Kira’s scarf isn’t unnerving at all; it’s bright, happy, like the joyful heart of a playful fire. And Erica’s socks feel flirty and fun, like the red of a Valentine’s Day present. He tries not to worry too much about what the red of his gift from Scott will feel like. “It’s fitting, I guess,” he says.

“I guess,” Kira says. Her hands trail down the fringe of her scarf, twirling the loose ends around her finger. “I wonder why we always associate love with red. It kind of always reminds me of blood.” She wrinkles her nose. “Or maybe I’m just kind of weird.”

“Well, that makes two of us,” Boyd says. Kira grins at him, and the fringe twists free from her hand. “I like being kind of weird, though.”

Kira smiles. “So do I.” A car honks outside, and she jumps up from the couch. “ _Finally_ ,” she says as Boyd follows her out of the house and into the car. “What took you so long?”

“Ran into Scott,” Malia says. She turns around in the drivers seat, wiggling the pom at the top of her hat. “Isn’t this awesome?”

The hat is cherry-red and cheery with tiny deer prancing through the stitches. “Very,” Boyd says, and Malia grins.

“You _sure_ you don’t want to go to the movies with us, Boyd?” she asks.

“I’m sure,” he says. “Promised Derek we’d do dinner tonight.”

“Gotcha,” Malia says, and steers the car away from the Yukimura house. “See if you can talk him into going sledding with us tomorrow, though. What I would give to see Derek in a flying saucer.”

Kira grins, tugging the thick braid that hangs from the earflap of Malia’s hat. “Oh man. I’m going to take so many pictures if that happens. Boyd, you gotta make him go.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Boyd promises. The girls beam at him, and he settles into the backseat for the short ride to Derek’s house.

He doesn’t really know if he believes in fate, and he doesn’t really know if he believes in soulmates. There’s something comforting about the thought of being connected to another person against all odds, anchoring each other with love and the solid assurance of _meant to be_. It’s a nice thought, to be sure. A sweet sort of dream.

Boyd isn’t really sure if he believes in it – not for himself, at least. But as he sits in Malia’s car and watches Kira absentmindedly wind the hat’s braid around her finger, he thinks that maybe it could be more than just a myth.

 

The thing is, Boyd doesn’t remember dying. He doesn’t remember the end, the moment when the world finally stopped. He remembers everything slowing down, more and more and more until he couldn’t feel a thing…and then he remembers sharp pain flaring through his body and setting his mind on fire as the world rushed back to meet him.

He doesn’t remember the exact moment that he died, but he remembers everything that led up to it and followed after. Sometimes, most times, he wishes that he didn’t.

He remembers the claws. Derek’s claws, his alpha’s claws, stabbing through him and wounding him in so many ways. He tries not to dwell on it too much – in the moment, when it happened, it had been…easier, almost. He’d known that the end was inevitable, he’d known that his time was up, he’d known that none of it was Derek’s fault and that he would much rather go in peace than anger. And so he did.

But now, things are more complicated. Now, he has the luxury of looking at his life in retrospect, can view it with a critical eye and see where choices went wrong and right. It had been easy to forgive, back when he was still trying to grasp what had happened to him. It had been easy, when it was clear that Derek had only tried to protect him and his murderers were long buried and lost. It had been easy to understand the twins’ brutal past, easy to track down Ethan and ask Scott to grant Aiden the same mercy that Boyd had received. It had been easy, so easy to forgive when he still believed in the unyielding force of _inevitable_.

He doesn’t remember dying, but he remembers knowing that it would come. He remembers knowing, he remembers accepting, he remembers forgiving, and he remembers finding peace in his last moments of memory. There is nothing easy about dying, Boyd knows, but there is something freeing about the very end of _inevitable_. But now, the further and further he moves away from his _inevitable_ , the harder it all feels. The more of the story he learns, the more he understands the cost of a life stitched together at each end, the harder it all becomes. It’s harder to forgive Aiden, now that he’s walking the earth instead of buried deep beneath it, it’s harder to remember Derek’s fatal mistakes and deem him blameless, and it’s harder, so much harder to weigh all of his thoughts in his head and still say, _It was worth it_.

It _is_ worth it, in this exact moment, because he is alive and breathing and can think enough to say it. But Boyd doesn’t really know if he believes that it _was_ worth it anymore. Hindsight makes everything simpler and so much more complicated all at once, and Boyd resents himself for falling for it so much.

Sometimes, on his lowest days, he resents Scott for pulling him out of _inevitable_. The feeling passes in an instant, never settles in his thoughts long enough to take root, but he feels it all the same. He wishes he could face the twins again, he wishes he could tell Derek that he forgives him with enough conviction for Derek to believe him, and he wishes…he wishes for that peace he found in his last moments. He wishes that the world could make as much sense now as it had then. He wishes that he could be a better man and just move on already.

He doesn’t tells Scott any of this. How could he, when his thoughts turn so hideous that Boyd can’t even forgive himself for them? But the thing is, he knows that he doesn’t have to tell Scott any of this because Scott already understands. If the tapestry of Boyd’s life is stitched together over the tiniest of gaps, Scott’s is torn in so many places, so worn thin with the barest of threads stretched across its tears that the stitched together slash down its middle barely even stands out.

Boyd is no True Alpha. He has no idea what Scott can do. But sometimes, he wonders if Scott would have ever woken if his mother hadn’t been there to pull him back from _inevitable_. And sometimes, on Scott’s lowest days that he allows Boyd to see, that fleeting shadow in Boyd’s mind knows the answer.

Today, he can be grateful that Derek was with him when he died. Today, he can be grateful that Scott was with him when he came back to life. And the thing is, Boyd decides, is that _inevitable_ doesn’t really matter to him. _Inevitable_ is easy. Living beyond it is much harder.

And today, Boyd decides, today is all that matters to him.

 

* * *

 

Boyd lets himself into the McCall house with leftovers from yesterday’s dinner at Derek’s. His own family already has a giant container of leftovers sitting in their fridge, and Cora brought more to the Reyes house after driving Boyd home. The recipes aren’t perfect yet – he can see the twitches in Derek’s brow when he eats, his slight frown when the taste doesn’t quite match up with how he remembers. Replicating dishes from memory alone isn’t easy, and these recipes were always meant to feed a large family. And, in a way, Boyd supposes that they still do.

It’s the end of the week. Tomorrow will be Christmas, with the entire pack descending upon the McCall house as soon as the sun rises. Erica and Mason will string lights and mistletoe from every possible fixture, and Lydia and Malia will argue over every single trimming on the tree, and Braeden and Derek will hide in the kitchen with Melissa and her homemade eggnog until they all squash into the living room to exchange gifts. Today, though, the house is quiet, Melissa and Isaac out shopping for last-minute groceries, and Boyd hides the spare key back inside the potted plant as he shuts the door behind him.

All of the yarn is gone from the loveseat in the living room. The knitting needles are slotted away in their containers and stacked neatly in a half-open shoebox, along with scattered tapestry needles, loose rolls of measuring tape, and a small pair of scissors. Boyd closes the lid and carries the box with him up the stairs. The door to Scott’s room is half-open, as usual, and he carefully pushes it the rest of the way open.

Scott is sprawled out on the bed, drooling into the comforter with his hands shoved awkwardly under the pillow. He wakes as the door creaks open, squinting blearily until he sees Boyd in the doorway. “Hey,” he rasps, voice still rough from sleep. “Sorry, didn’t mean to fall asleep on you.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Boyd lays down next to him, nudging the comforter out of the way as he leans in for a kiss. “Merry Christmas.”

“It’s not Christmas yet.”

“Shh.” Boyd reaches into his jacket and sets an envelope on the bed. “There’ll be an appropriately embarrassing one with your real gift tomorrow, but I wanted you to read this one without everyone else around.”

Scott reads the card slowly. Boyd watches his eyes trail back and forth across the page, stopping at the end for a long moment before lifting to meet his. “ _Boyd_ ,” he says, voice choked. He swallows, eyes bright, and Boyd pulls him in close.

“It’s you,” he whispers against Scott’s lips, lifting his hands to press a kiss to one palm and then the other. “Scott, it’s always been you.” Scott tucks his face into the crook of Boyd’s neck, and they hold each other until their hands finally stop shaking.

Scott finally pulls away, wipes his eyes on his sleeve as he sits upright. “I have something for you, too,” he says, and reaches under his pillow.

If Boyd is being completely honest with himself – and he isn’t, not always, no matter how much he tries to be – he’s been nervous about this moment. No, not just nervous; he’s been _terrified_. Scott’s gifts for everyone are simple, innocuous, nothing more than red yarn stitched into innocent designs, and Boyd can’t stop himself from reading so much into them. He can’t stop himself from seeing so much meaning in the pockets of Mason’s scarf, in Derek’s fuzzy mittens or Liam’s fingerless gloves. They all say so much about each person and absolutely nothing at all, and Boyd doesn’t want to know what twisted meaning his mind will dredge up for his own gift.

Then Scott holds out a plain red scarf, and his entire world spins to a stop.

It’s simple – the simplest design out of all the gifts that Boyd has seen, made from thread so fine that Boyd has to squint to follow a single line. He traces it all the way along the scarf, around a single twist and looping back to meet a near-invisible seam. He holds the inside of the scarf up to his eyes, tracing the tiny bump of a line with his finger and losing it altogether when he turns the cloth back around.

“It’s an infinity scarf,” Scott says. He sounds nervous, hands clasped tightly in his lap. “It, um, I thought maybe-”

“It’s perfect,” Boyd says, and it is. It really is. “I love it, Scott.”

Scott beams. He loops the scarf over Boyd’s head and pulls him in for a kiss. “I love you.”

He knows.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say [hi](http://pocketlass.tumblr.com)!


End file.
